Monday, May 29, 2006

PMC-Sierra introduced an Analog Front End (AFE) for VDSL2 and ADSL2+ Customer Premises Equipment (CPE). The highly integrated CMOS device is a stand-alone VDSL2 AFE, enabling Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to quickly bring to market VDSL2 modem or residential gateway products featuring extended rate/reach, full backwards compatibility to ADSL2+, and the elimination of the need for a discrete line driver and external power supply and clock components, thereby reducing BOM costs and real estate.

PMC-Sierra said its new PM4380 integrates a high-performance 5V line driver and offers extremely low transmit path distortion and noise floor. The receive path, including the integrated ultra-low noise amplifier, provides an input-referred noise density of -150dBm/Hz, while high-precision 16-bit data converters offer best-in-class performance on both receive and transmit chains. The low transmit and receive noise floors, combined with high-resolution data converters and integrated programmable receive equalizer and filters, reduce the need for complex and costly external filters to achieve optimum rate/reach performance. In addition, the device integrates a 16-bit digitally controlled crystal oscillator (DCXO) that provides better than 0.02 ppm frequency resolution, and an optional 1.8V regulator that allows the PM4380 to be used in a system that only provides 3.3V and 5V. By offering this leading-edge performance, the PM4380 device enables OEMs to deliver products that provide faster broadband connections over longer loop lengths.

Earlier this year, PMC-Sierra acquired Passave Inc., a developer of system-on-chip semiconductor solutions for the Fiber To The Home (FTTH) access market. The Passave product line includes system-on-chip solutions for Optical Line Terminals (OLTs) for the Central Office, Optical Network Terminals (ONTs), and Optical Network Units (ONUs) solutions for residential termination equipment. Passave has delivered two million ONU devices that have been deployed in NTT's Fiber To The Home broadband access network. Passave's product set includes GPON chipsets supporting 2.5 Gbps downstream and 1.25 Gbps upstream, and features Forward error correction and AES-128 encryption.